Elephants and Jackasses...

I'm going to assume that there are several people here who will not be on board with The Green New Deal backed by AOC and others when it is revealed. With that in mind, I want to ask, what climate-related policy would you support and what milestones do you expect that policy to reach if enacted?

 

It's not that people don't get it. It's that a vocal part of the left is so disgusted by the vocal right's racism that they can't abide anybody on their side being even remotely associated with racist behavior, no matter when it happened.

 

You're so full of shit dude. There's a reason this 'vocal left' uses the words dog whistle half a dozen times every time they write about racism. To make racism omnipresent you have to constantly take what people say and pretend they said something entirely different. Your modern vocal right racists are morons on twitter complaining about white genocide.

Talking about how to reduce real racism though, I'll tell you how you sure as fuck don't do it. You don't flip your shit on people for being offensive 3+ decades ago and then spend the next hour moaning about fucking white males, and then sit down to pump out another article about fucking uneducated white males. How is that supposed to work? Why in the fuck do these people think it works? It is the stupidest most counterproductive thing ever. You think firing Megyn Kelly over the most trivial shit imaginable is going to reduce racism? The fuck? But by all means go find another word to make a secret dog whistle because if it didn't work the last 8 million fucking times maybe it will this time. What are we on now? Is it 'nationalist' or is already a new one?

I will likely be very much for it, but with one caveat. If a good chunk of it is authored by AOC I'm going to be extremely nervous. There is no way in hell she is ready to write major sections of what would arguably be the most important bill (if it gets passed, which it won't for at least another a couple years) since Roosevelt's new deal.

 

I expect that the bulk of it will be the work of Ed Markey, or rather him and his legislative aides.

 

Probably. If AOC wants to be a major contributor to the changes she pushes for she needs to realize she can't keep pissing off her coworkers. There are a handful of JDs in congress now, but they're going to be a fringe minority for a very long time. Isolated with no allies isn't a viable path to getting shit done.

Not that I think she will. She has her schtick and I imagine she'll keep running with it.

Regarding the bill though, I hope people realize an infrastructure investment like this costs a shitload of money. We recently managed to pretend we could start 2 wars, and so many other little ones it practically constitutes a third without paying for it. If people want things to happen they're going to have to live with forking over another $40 a month. An investment far more worth it than building another 100 warships so we can train more crews on the art of shoving your thumb up your ass for 4 years.

 

I don't understand:

Define racial and economic justice. Is that language still going to be part of the bill?

What energy source are they going to promote in the interim until renewables are ready and scalable to be the main energy source, while carbon-based fuels are priced out of existence?

What shall we assume the tax bracketing will look like to pay for this?

Does that re-rack of the tax bracketing account for universal healthcare, mandatory $15 minimum wage, government jobs for everyone, free college that Cortes is promising? If not, let's discuss that, it seems that the Democrats intend to cede control to her, so I would like to hear about that as well.

 

Perhaps my tone wasn't conveyed well through text. The last question wasn't rhetorical, genuinely asking what policies would be supported.

 

I'm genuinely asking you the questions above. If there are no answers for those, specifically the second question because that is the only sliver of the New Green Deal you seem to recognize, then the plan is the status quo. You are simplifying something with extensive connective tissue down to a single statement of how climate change is addressed, which doesn't actually unpack the whole plan.

 

I believe in this context racial and economic justice would refer to the fact that we have built and distributed an enormous amount of wealth based on energy, the full cost of which we have not paid for. In any reckoning with that unpaid cost, we must ensure that we do not shoulder an unfair burden onto the poor or onto minorities. As for how I feel about that particular issue I think from a practical point of view it's something we should bear in mind (telling poor people that their cars and heat are going to get more expensive and they can just fuck off if they don't like it won't be politically viable), but (and this may be my privilege showing) I prioritize the end goal of climate stabilization above all else.

Personally I support nuclear power for this purpose, and using a pre-licensing process to expedite regulatory approval for known designs such as Westinghouse's AP1000. I also think it will be necessary to endure some amount of economic pain in switching off fossil fuels, which will likely take the form of increased energy prices.

I think we're going to have to raise taxes anyway just because of how unsustainable Republican tax cuts have been in recent years. Specifically on the climate front, I would support https://energyinnovationact.org/ which is a bill currently introduced. This would be the main tool to drive the economics of energy more in favor of renewables and nuclear.

I view those as separate issues, although any plan that increases energy prices will by necessity affect the economics of low income individuals and families and thus they must be considered together if they are going to be considered at all.

 

I want the bill to take into account that some people will get hit harder economically than others, but I'm beyond giving a fuck if people are upset they have to pay a few higher bills.
We've been debating this for 30 years. In that time we've transitioned from preventment to containment. We need to start seriously addressing it, and doing what we can for people who are going to lose jobs, but if they don't accept that too fucking bad. They aren't the first workers in an industry that has gone obsolete. I don't see anyone crying for the shrinking field of tobacco farmers.
That said the democrats have no business tacking on a bunch of irrelevant shit. They have nothing to do with this and need to be addressed separately.

 

Might clear some way for Klobuchar. Is it possible however with regards to her Native American claims, even going back as far as the 80's that she was just going by something she was told by her family? In her mind, she wasn't knowingly telling a lie because she didn't think it was?

I'm not trying to defend her horrible clean up job of the controversy(DNA test), but I can't imagine her using that in a nefarious way if she didn't think there was some truth to it.

 

Is Stacey Abrams speaking in front of a green screen?

 

It's pretty clear that, like a lot of people in Oklahoma, she was told that she had native ancestry and just took it to be a fact of her heredity.

 

I don't care where she got the idea because it's stupid regardless, but I don't get how things like this ruin candidates. Remember in 2004 when Howard Dean had that really brief moment of awkwardness in Iowa and for whatever reason the media decided to play the ever loving shit out of it?

How does stuff like this ruin candidates and then people like Menendez and Rick Perry get reelected over and over? Someone so corrupt they belong in prison? Commit war crimes? Raped a few women? Has an IQ below 85? NO PROBLEM. But God forbid someone has a totally innocuous silly belief.

People care about the strangest things.

 

That behavior made it easy to decide whose position to support.

 

I guess I take a more cynical view of politicians. Maybe it is because they made a lifetime career of public service, which was always intended on being a temporary duty upon which you served your term and then you returned to normal life. Duty, not a career. Especially one that has turned into a quick payday through rampant corruption. It takes a special person to conduct themselves like this in my estimation.

Separately, I look at Elizabeth Warren and realize she and I don't look all too different - in terms of hair color, eye color, skin color, facial structure. Beyond that, I know quite a few native american people, the reservation for the Penobscot people wasn't far from where I grew up. At no point was there ever a question in my mind whether or not I was in any way related to my friends who were part of the Penobscot nation. Don't get me wrong, I have seen people who look dramatically different than the Penobscots who are 1/32 native american but still, never someone like Warren.

So, I guess I'm trying to say that if you are someone of the persuasion that is drawn to politics, it doesn't surprise me that you would pull some bullshit like this. You create a lie and believe in it because deep down you know it will take you places. Like Harvard for instance.